It’s been 4 years since TypeScript schema validation library Zod released v3, but the new v4 release makes it worth the wait. Expect faster parsing times across the board, built in error pretty-printing, and even a tree-shakeable API called Zod Mini for constrained environments like edge runtimes.

There’s a new npm-based CLI tool for managing and sharing AI rules across different editors and tools called vibe-rules. In addition to saving favorite prompts so they can be applied to any supported editor, vibe-rules can also automatically install prompts shared in a project’s NPM packages into an editor’s configuration. It’s early days yet, but a great idea to make prompts easier for anyone to use.

Angular v20 is out with some much anticipated highlights. Stabilized signal-based APIs, incremental hydration, custom Angular reporting directly in Chrome DevTools, GenAI development advancements, and, last but not least, a RFC for an official Angular mascot. Not to bias you, but we favor the pink, dice-shaped mascot around here.

In this episode:

• 1:10 - Zod v4
• 5:50 - vibe-rules
• 15:12 - Angular 20
• 27:03 - Remix v3
• 31:32 - Stack Overflow’s Annual Dev Survey
• 38:02 - Firefox and Temporal
• 39:15 - Bolt’s hackathon status

News:

• Paige - Zod v4
• Jack - vibe-rules
• TJ - Angular 20

Lightning News:

• Remix v3 updates
• Firefox is the first browser to support Temporal (Temporal on MDN)
• StackOverflow’s Annual Dev Survey is out now
• Bolt’s hackathon starts

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Annual Gloucestershire cheese rolling race and Wiki history
• Jack - The Portland Pickles baseball game
• TJ - StoryGraph and The God of the Woods

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

This week both Google and Microsoft held conferences where they announced all the new, great AI breakthroughs, but there were a few other notable, web dev-focused pieces in between. VS Code announced it will be open sourcing the GitHub Copilot Chat extension, refactoring relevant components into its core codebase, as the next logical step “in making VS Code an open source AI editor.”

Microsoft has floated a new idea called “NLWeb” to make it easier for websites to turn themselves into AI apps using an LLM model and their own data. While this sounds interesting, it’s very early days yet and is not ready for prime time.

A blog post from Remix creator Ryan Florence leaked earlier this week, and in it, Ryan shares that Remix v3 will move away from using React. The usual criticisms of React are present, and so Remix v3 will be completely new with a focus on a framework that’s AI friendly and leveraging all the Web APIs available today. 

News:

• VS Code is open sourcing its AI chat extension
• Remix’s “Declaration of Independence” blog leaked
• And Microsoft introduces yet another AI standard

Lightning News:

• Satya Nadella and podcasts
• Introducing Claude 4 

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Daredevil: Born Again TV series
• Jack -  Baseball team Portland Pickles’ Red Head Appreciation Night
• TJ - The Philadelphia Inquirer’s summer reading list

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

CTO and co-founder of Apollo, Matt DeBergalis, joins us on this episode to talk about how GraphQL has continued to evolve over time, and how Apollo is focused on making it more accessible for developers and AI agents than ever before.

For those less familiar with Apollo and GraphQL, Matt shares the history of both, including lessons he learned from founding the company Meteor that helped him while building Apollo.

We discuss how even though GraphQL is making less headlines than it was a few years ago, it’s really begun to find its niche within larger organizations that have hundreds or even thousands of APIs and databases underpinning their many applications, and how Apollo has continued to evolve so that it can support APIs, serverless functions, and SQL- or no SQL-databases, with little extra code needed to make these different data sources work together.

Matt also highlights the benefits of a GraphQL schema for AI agents and MCP servers, sharing how the agents are generally very good at parsing the schemas and understanding how to leverage queries against the interface to retrieve the data they need. While we’ve had tech stacks in the past like LAMP and MERN, this new addition of AI to the development mix provides a unique opportunity to redefine the stack once more, and GraphQL could be a very good piece to include.

Special Guest

• Matt DeBergalis, CTO and co-founder of Apollo

Relevant Links:

• Apollo GraphQL website
• Apollo GraphQL YouTube
• Apollo GraphQL LinkedIn
• Apollo GraphQL on X
• Matt on GitHub
• Matt on X
• Matt on Medium
• Matt on LinkedIn

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - The Pitt TV series
• TJ - I Think I Was Murdered
• Matt - Teaching my daughter to ride a bike

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

TanStack, a collection of popular open-source software libraries, is back in the news cycle this week with the announcement of TanStack DB. TanStack DB extends TanStack Query with collections, live queries, and optimistic UI mutations to keep UIs reactive, consistent, and lightning fast.

VS Code marks its 100th release of v1 with updates like: enabling Next Edit Suggestions (NES) be default, adding custom instructions and reusable prompts for a chat agent inside a project’s .github folder, and new tools at the AI agent’s disposal for better results.

There’s a new component library available called Basecoat UI that claims to bring the magic of shadcn/ui with no React required. No matter if a website’s built using HTML, Flask, Rails, or another JS framework, Basecoat uses HTML and Tailwind, and a hint of Alpine.js when needed, to provide accessible, modern components that are also compatible with shadcn/ui themes.

News:

• Paige - Basecoat UI - framework agnostic component library
• Jack - TanStack DB
• TJ - VS Code 1.100

Bonus News:

• Apparently we should all just f’ing use HTML
• Parcel v2.15 jumps on the Rust bandwagon
• Google is testing a new “AI Mode”
• Google’s logo change
• Max once again becomes HBO Max

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - House of Earth and Blood (#1 in Crescent City series) 
• Jack -  Grand Sumo May 2025 Tournament
• TJ - Coast of Michigan

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

Node is back in the news with some noteworthy updates as v24 drops. It gets an upgrade to 13.6 for its V8 JavaScript engine, runs with npm version 11, and has more efficient implementation of the local storage API and test runner updates.

Google has released its newest version of its Gemini AI model: Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O Edition), which claims to be the best model for front-end and UI development. To prove it, Google links to a site called the WebDev Arena (where Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview ranks #1), that lets users put in a prompt and then pits different AI models head to head to build a site based on the prompt. 

Figma just had their 2025 Config conference and unveiled a host of new offerings, including Figma Sites that lets folks design, prototype and publish with Figma, and Figma Make the AI prompting tool that can add functionality to a Figma mockup via natural language directions.

News:

• Paige - Node 24 updates
• Jack - Figma Make and Figma Sites and conference demo video
• TJ - Gemini 2.5 updates and WebDev Arena

Bonus News:

• Take the first annual State of Devs survey
• OpenAI agrees to buy Windsurf for $3B

Fire Starters:

• CSS reading-flow and reading-order

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Old Town Trolley Tours
• Jack -  The Residence TV show
• TJ - ChatGPT helping with camera & video setup

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

The React team’s been on a roll lately with new experimental updates. Last episode we covered  View Transitions, and today we discuss Activity. Activity is a component to hide and show parts of the UI while maintaining the component’s state and continuing to render at a lower priority when it’s not visible on screen.

Storybook 9 beta is out now, and it seems to be transitioning from a frontend workshop for building UI components in isolation to a one-stop shop for all your frontend testing needs.

And Microsoft recently released a paper from researchers at Cambridge and Carnegie Mellon studying how AI coding assistants have allowed developers to engage in less critical thinking and independent problem-solving, and how the skills to do both could deteriorate if this over-reliance on AI continues unchecked.

News:

• Paige - Storybook 9 beta
• Jack - React
• TJ - The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking and Avoiding Skill Atrophy in the Age of AI

Bonus News:

• Ladybird new independent web browser
• MTMC-16
• Apple changes App Store rules to allow external purchases

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - The Night Manager series
• Jack - Raycast
• TJ - Linkin Park World Tour

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

Signals has been gaining in popularity the past few years for its fine-grained approach to reactivity in the browser, and a new high performance implementation called Alien Signals has landed in Vue.js. It offers significant performance improvements to complex applications with lots of data changes, and has been extended so it can be used in other JS-based libraries besides Vue.

 The React team announces that React Compiler has reached release candidate (RC) stage and is nearing stable release territory. React Compiler is a build-time tool that optimizes React apps through automatic memoization so devs don’t have to worry about including useMemo() and useCallback() hooks in their code.

RedwoodSDK, which had some cryptic messaging about its future last month, has unveiled more of the story on its new website this month. It’s aiming to be part of the “personal software revolution” by providing a React framework for Cloudflare, offering built in access to Cloudflare Workers, databases and storage, queues, AI, and more.

News:

• Paige - RedwoodSDK details revealed
• Jack - Alien Signals
• TJ - React Compiler RC

Bonus News:

• Everybody wants to buy Chrome

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Severance TV series season 2
• Jack - Grilling season
• TJ - Detroit grows in population for the first time in decades

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

The AI hype train keeps chugging along with new updates from OpenAI. ChatGPT now offers GPT-4.1 - a new dev-first model trained for use cases related to coding, instruction following, and function calling with a context window of up to 1 million tokens. It also announces Codex CLI, a terminal version of ChatGPT that devs can use to run code, manipulate files, and iterate without ever leaving their preferred terminal.

Next.js 15.3 drops with new features like using its Turbopack buildpack for production builds (still in alpha stage so use with caution), community support for Rspack as a drop in replacement for the Webpack bundler, and new navigation hooks for enhanced client-side routing capabilities.

There’s also a new survey out this week: the first annual State of Web Dev AI, which answers questions like which AI tools devs find most useful, how much devs are spending on AI, and what pain points are devs most likely to encounter when leveraging AI to develop their own web apps.

News:

• Paige - OpenAI Codex CLI and GPT-4.1 models
• Jack - State of AI Web Dev 2025
• TJ - Next.js 15.3

Bonus News:

• OpenAI is in talks to acquire Windsurf for $3B
• “Slopsquatting”
• AI agents for everyone (Firebase Studio), (Arduino AI Assistant)

Fire Starter:

• Declarative Web Push

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Solo Leveling anime series
• Jack - Knuckles TV mini series 
• TJ - NY Times Flashback

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

Google announces a new Agent2Agent protocol meant to support AI agents communicating with each other. A2A aims to  complement MCP and address the challenges of deploying large-scale, multi-agent systems from various providers across different platforms and cloud environments.

GitHub Copilot’s new code review feature is now generally available. Just like you’d assign a coworker to review a PR, users can now assign a Copilot agent to review that same PR and spot bugs, identify potential performance problems, and suggest fixes.

RedwoodJS has rebranded itself RedwoodSDK, and is focusing on a new framework that will become the foundation of a personal software revolution. RedwoodSDK promises modern serverless infrastructure, AI-driven dev tools, and open ecosystems, with more details coming soon.

News:

• Paige - RedwoodJS becomes RedwoodSDK
• Jack - Google’s A2A
• TJ - Copilot code reviews & premium requests

Bonus News:

• StackBlitz is hosting the world’s largest hackathon
• Devin 2.0
• Wordpress.com launches free AI-powered website builder

Fire Starter:

• text-wrap: pretty

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Claude AI
• Jack - The Accountant 2 movie
• TJ - Apple Sports

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

The tRPC team declares v11 officially production-ready. tRPC allows devs to build typesafe APIs with types that can be shared on the client and server, and now it has support for TanStack Query v5, the ability to send and receive non-JSON data content types, improved support for RSCs, and the ability to stream responses.

After the Next.js security incident a few weeks back, Netlify writes an open letter around the challenges Next.js poses when not hosted on Vercel. It raises valid points like a lack of adapters, no production grade documentation for serverless deployments, no visible roadmap or release schedule, and a disregard for open web standards, among others.

Firefox is finally adding support for progressive web apps (PWAs), but its web app support will intentionally not look, feel, or behave the same way similar features do in other browsers.

News:

• Paige - tRPC v11
• Jack - Firefox will support PWAs (finally)
• TJ - Next.js Netlify deployment drama

Bonus News:

• Styled-components enter maintenance mode
• New Bare JS runtime
• Windsurf and Netlify partnership (and docs on the feature)

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Squeeze Me novel
• Jack - Pickup Music site
• TJ - Mario Kart World

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast